_Ever since I transitioned from photography to video, especially with my 5D MKII, I stopped using some of my lenses, including my Canon 100-400L. In fact, I’ve only used it once or twice for video needs and had for the occasions when I felt like doing some photography.It is a great photography lens, but for video not so great, really shaky when focusing, even on tripod.I can’t justify keeping it for a very occasional photo session, but I still want to have a 400mm reach if I even need it both in video and photography. I decided to see what I can get with similar features for much, much lower price. I ended up buying 2 lenses, which by no means are the best in this focal range, but which won’t make rob the bank to buy them. You can see what they are like in the video above, so here I want to talk about my personal conclusions on each of them. Canon 100-400mm F/4.5-5.6 L – As mentioned above, this is a great photography lens, known to be very sharp wide open and it does look sharp in my little test I’ve done. Image stabilizer helps with the extensive shake, but it is still very difficult to use this lens for video without introducing a lot of shake due to its length when extended and quite stiff focusing ring (find for photography, but had to be much smoother for video). I think this lens is worth its money for photographers, but I can’t justify the price for video users.Tamron 200-400mm LD f/5.6 – This is one of my 2 potential replacements. This lens offers auto focusing on Canon DSLRs, which is essential for photography needs (not as fast and quiet as Canon though).It is also easy to focus manually, however the lens is even longer than Canon when extended and the lack of Image Stabilizer makes image at 400mm look very shaky when focusing. With such lenses you can just about getaway with having a locked of focus on a tripod without touching the camera, otherwise there is a camera shake all over the place. To my big surprise the image quality and the sharpness on this lens is very close to Canon. Considering that the lens can be bought about 4/5 times cheaper than Canon, it is certainly an impressive performance. The one thing that is a bit annoying is constant aperture of f/5.6. I can live with it at 400mm, but I wouldn’t use this lens for 200mm shots. There are plenty of vintage 200mm f/3.5 lenses (some which I tested earlier) costing as little as £15, so the really is no point in using such lens for 200mm shot, which for me makes it a bit of waist.Tokina 400mm AT-X f/5.6 – Now, this is a very interesting alternative to both lenses. As mentioned above, the are plenty of cheaper, faster lenses below 400mm, so what not just get a prime like this one which is 400mm only with the benefits of reduced size, due to lack of zoom. This lens is the most compact out of 3. The only one that has an inbuilt metal (rather than plastic) lens hood.The lens is built like a tank, much better than Tamron. The focusing ring is really smooth with quite a long focusing through comparing to other 2.The combination of shorter length and smooth focusing ring actually lets you focus with this lens without introducing camera shake. This is a big deal for me. There is also auto focusing on Canon DSLRs (for stills of course).The sharpens of the images is very almost identical to Tamron. Certainly a great performance great for the money. Same as Tamron it is 4/5 times cheaper than Canon, so definitely worth the money.

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_All 3 lenses are worth their money and I will let you guys make up your own minds, but my personal conclusion is that I will be keeping the Tokina. This is the only one that I can actually use for video properly and it has auto focusing if I ever fancy taking a few pics.

Maybe not is my answer to the question above.Covering new releases is not my thing, there are tons of other blogs for that, so I’m not going to discuss the specs that you probably already know. I was really looking forward to see what Canon will bring out on 03.11.11, because like a lot of indie filmmakers currently using Canon DSLRs, I was really hoping to see Canon’s answer to Sony FS100 and Panasonic AF101. I have to say, to my great disappointment Canon released a camcorder, that is totally out my price range and for that matter of majority of indie/ low budget filmmakers. Many tweets and comments on different blogs mirror my opinion. People knew it won’t be 5D MKIII, but many were hoping for a reasonably priced camcorder that would work with Canon EF lenses currently used by many of us. C300 does come with EF mount but at $20k price tag definitely not something I could afford or would even like to spend on my next camera. More than that, C300 doesn’t even look like such a revolutionary camera at this price tag. Canon were promising to make a Historic Global Announcement. I have to say the new C300 is certainly not a Historic camera. It rivals the Sony F3, but nothing more really. Like cheaper F3, C300 will not really be budget filmmakers camera of choice. Majority of people looking to upgrade from a DSLR were looking at either FS100 or AF101. For now I can safely, but sadly say, these are still the only 2 proper camcorders around $5k price tag, the only 2 that can be considered as a reasonable step up from a DSLR.

But as you may know the camera releases didn’t stop there. RED has finally released their long awaited Scarlet on the same day as Canon. On paper it looks like a really nice camera and actually looks much more like a Historic Camera, than C300. For a camera that shoots 4K and has a lot of features found in $58k EPIC, $10k body only price is seems to be really attractive, in fact almost within reach on indie filmmakers, but add all the essential accessories and will cost more like $20k, still much cheaper than EPIC, but again out of reach for most of us. I’ve never been a massive fan of RED. RED ONE is very expensive, can be slow in operation and not very reliable. Even more expensive EPIC has massive reliability issues too. Philip Bloom owns one and has had problems with it on 2 out of 2 shoots he used it for, not something that is really acceptable from a $58k camera. So at the moment I’m a bit skeptical of what Scarlet will turn out to be. Everyone agrees that C300 will probably be reliable camera straight out of the box, where Scarlet users will probably have to wait for multiple firmware updates to get the best performance out of it. Saying that, people are very, very exited about the new Scarlet, I’ve seen many very positive & exciting comments/tweets regarding the new Scarlet. A lot of people express their wish to buy it, but I haven’t seen even one comment expressing a wish to buy the C300; like one Tweeter member said, the only person who seems to be excited about the new C300 is Vincent Laforet, understandably so. The Scarlet will do well for sure, even at $20k this will be the cheapest camera with such features. I really don’t know where C300 will fit in, probably like PB said best place for it is broadcast work along side F3. Unfortunately it won’t be changing the game for anyone.

The only mildly exciting announcement on 3th of November was the development of new Canon DSLR capable of shooting 4K footage. This camera looks very much like 1D X, which is also one of new cameras, but for me the improvements in 1D X don’t justify the price tag of around $7000. This top of the line Canon camera is primarily designed for professional photographers, so by no means I would say it’s not worth its money, just not for budget videographer. I thing both FS100 and AF101 are much better value for money tools for videographers than 1D X.

Coming back to the new concept DSLR currently being developed (or possibly already developed and in testing), this is going to be much more video orientated than 1D X. Up to 4K resolution, quite possibly introduction of headphones jack, peeking, zebras, video optimized sensor, HD-SDI output, clean HD output and would be nice to stick at least one XLR input into that battery grip. Of course, except for 4K resolution this is just a wish list rather than a fact list. A few reasons why I’m only mildly excited about the announcement:

1: It is going to be as expensive as 1D X or even more, around $7k-$10k, again not 5D MKII price range. That is why people always talking about 5D MKIII, the price range, features for money. Ever since 5D MKI came out it, it was the best value for money stills camera for me; 5D MKII followed the suit, so Canon please just bring out the 5D MKIII already.

2: No idea when this new going to be released, wouldn’t expect Canon to release a $10k camera capable of shooting 4K resolution straight after they released $20k camera capable of shooting only 1080P and just 720p at 60fps. People buying C300 will not be happy to see cheaper DSLR perform better than high-end camcorder. I wouldn’t expect this camera to come out in next 5 months. We might actually see 5D MKII replacement before that.

So all in all, 3th of November wasn’t a historic day for me. Scarlet is the most exciting thing announced for me, but certainly out of my budget.

The one camera that I’m currently excited about is Sony NEX-5N. That is what I’m calling exciting camera, incredible value for money. Tiny $500 camera with big features including 60fps at 1080p; not even Sony’s F3 or Canons new $20k C300 can do that; crazy! This is the camera that can shoot very cinematic looking videos; it’s compatible with majority of lovely, cheap vintage manual lenses out there and to take the full advantage of manual focusing it even has peeking, something that can’t be found even on latest $7k Canon 1D X. With compatible Sony lenses it will even autofocus in real time, again something that Canon’s new 1D X and even C300 won’t be able to do.

5N can be a great B camera, but it could even be a great A camera if you are shooting something for yourself. Of course if you turn up to a paid gig with a compact looking camera like this, your client will probably freak out, but only because they won't know what quality images this camera produces. The best thing about this camera, it is affordable to almost anyone, there aren’t really any cheaper video DSLR cameras with APS-C sensor anyway, so if you are looking to spend some money on a video camera, the 5N is the one of best value for money cameras at the moment. In fact I really want to buy one myself, maybe I will treat myself for Christmas.